


Jamais Vu

by ghosttownmayor



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Andrew's a bit sidelined here but i do love him, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Psychological Trauma, Trauma, and i'm self isolating so now i have an excuse to go insane. enjoy., the foxhole court - Freeform, writing this felt very silly but alas it was projection time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:55:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23493574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosttownmayor/pseuds/ghosttownmayor
Summary: Neil imagines how things could've been, if only he hadn't been the son of Nathan Wesninski.The title means 'never seen', which is the opposite of déjà vu (already seen).
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 3
Kudos: 47





	Jamais Vu

Neil felt like shit. He didn’t show it. Someone was sure to advantage if he did. The only sign that anything was wrong was the somewhat clumsily applied make-up under his eye. He’d put the brushes on the bathroom counter the night before. He’d known he’d need them, although he hadn’t found it in him to even put in any effort this morning. There were plenty of reasons to have bags under your eyes after all. He was a college student and looked like one, he reminded himself. The thought of orange jerseys comforted him more than his coffee. If anyone in this coffee shop noticed he was upset, they’d blame it on an all-nighter or a difficult girlfriend. No one’s first thought would be ‘oh, I bet this is the anniversary of when he lit his mother’s corpse on fire’. A smirk tugged at his lips at the thought. These kids would get a heart attack if he told them what he’d been through. They’d be dead, he thought, looking at the people around him. Neil wasn’t. He was alive. He was alive, he was one of the best strikers in the US, and he had a boyfriend. He took a sip of his coffee. It burned his mouth. Although he’d lost count of all the dreams in which he burned, reaching for the handle of a car door only to find it too hot to touch, the coffee confirmed that he was in fact awake. 

Neil deliberately kept his shoulders relaxed, but his heart skipped a beat. There were eyes on him. His keys were in his pocket. Very carefully, he nudged them until they fell out. He bent down a little faster than his mother taught him, turning his head towards the eyes that were burning a hole in his back. He relaxed. It was just a kid. Brown eyes, chubby cheeks, and traces of whipped cream and chocolate milk around the corners of its mouth. It stared at his face. Neil stared back for a second. He didn’t bother smiling at it, but his heartbeat was significantly lower when he turned back to his coffee. And then it went up again. Suddenly his throat felt tight. He breathed through his nose, trying to stop his hands from shaking. Breath in, breath out. Neil counted the breaths in his mother’s voice, but it didn’t help. Thoughts rushed through his head. They presented him with an alternate universe that was and always had been totally out of his reach. The images were burned into his mind’s eye. He glanced back at the child. It was looking at its mother. She was a tall woman with a haircut that looked awful, but still trendy enough to have been done by a proper hairdresser, not with medical scissors in the bathroom of a train. She looked nothing at all like his mom. The kid looked nothing at all like Neil. He wished they did. That kid would probably go to school. Properly go to school. He would sit at a lunch table and complain about the food with his friends. He would look at girls and they just might look back. He would talk to them. His mom would be worried too, but he wouldn’t care. He’d be able to shrug it off, complain about how strict his mom was to his friends. His teachers would force foreign vocabulary into his head and he wouldn’t see the use of it. Neil wanted to vomit. That could’ve been him, only it wasn’t. Any chance of Neil sitting like that, smiling like that, looking at strangers without a hand on his cheek forcing his head back around like that, had evaporated the second his father’s eye looked at him, lying in his mother’s blood. His hands were the first to touch him. His mother’s the fourth. After all the documentation was filled out, after he’d already become Nathaniel, once and for all. 

His coffee spilt over the table. Neil stood up. He felt sure his face was red. The bags under his eyes were no longer the most noticeable thing about him. The kid’s eyes were on him again. So were his mom’s, and the waitress’, and a few other people’s. Neil’s heart raced in his chest, and his feet soon matched its pace, rushing out of the door. He hadn’t paid for his coffee, he thought. He couldn’t come back here. For some reason that was the thing that got to him. He took cover behind a garbage bin and sat down. Their coffee was shit. He only went there because it was the closest coffee shop to the court. There was another one fifteen minutes further. There was no reason to be upset. So why wouldn’t his heart calm down? Why wouldn’t his face go back to its normal colour? His thumb lightly traced the keys of his flip phone. He didn’t press them yet. He simply enjoyed the feeling of the plastic coating under his fingers. He knew exactly which numbers and letters belonged to which keys. His eyes were fixed on the edge of his field of vision. Someone could find him at any moment. He imagined the waitress from the coffee shop finding him, demanding he pay for his coffee. In his fantasy she had a gun. In his fantasy she looked just like the kid’s mom. Andrew picked up on the second ring. 

“Junkie?”

Neil didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He wanted to. He didn’t normally call Andrew. Andrew would assume something was wrong. And there was nothing wrong. He was just sitting in an empty alley. There was no one else here. There was nothing wrong. A sob fought his way out of his throat. 

“Neil.” 

“Yeah?” Neil wiped his nose with his sleeve. His eyes kept darting to the corner of the street. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why don’t you sound like it?”

“I don’t know.” There was a second of silence. Neil pictured Andrew’s face. He doubted there would be any emotion visible on it, but he’d probably be pissed that Neil couldn’t tell him what was wrong. Neil’s thumb reached for the button to end the call.

“Where are you?”

Neil breathed out. “I’m not sure. An alley.”

“Lots of those.”

Neil didn’t dignify that with a response. He sat up on his heels, crouching and ready to run. He carefully leaned forwards. The alley was empty. A man in a suit walked past the end of it without a glance at Neil. A little sign told him where he was. Andrew hung up. He hadn’t said anything like ‘I’ll be there’, or ‘wait’, but he didn’t need to. Neil sat back behind the garbage can. His pulse had calmed down a little already. He almost wished it hadn’t. Now his brain actually had room to think about where he was, what he’d just done. He felt like a child. Making a scene and not even being able to pinpoint the cause. He lowered his head between his knees. Nausea rolled around in his stomach, a low background tune to the quiet cacophony of the scene. 

Andrew’s car looked like the chariots of heaven to Neil. The man sitting inside of it, an angel. He didn’t vocalise these thoughts. His only response would be a ridiculous percentage. Andrew held out his hand. Neil took it. Neil overbalanced a little when standing up. He leaned in closer than he normally would without a yes or no. Andrew didn’t flinch or comment. He was steady. The inside of the car smelled like leather and French fries from their date two days ago, although neither of them would ever call it that. Neil took deep breaths. This time it wasn’t to calm down. He simply wanted to inhale the scent of the car. Andrew sat behind the steering wheel. He drove more carefully than usually, but not calmly enough to avoid a few angry shouts from fellow drivers. Neil smiled at them and put his middle finger up when someone else did the same. Andrew pressed the gas pedal down a little further. Neil’s energy had dissipated by the time they reached the dorms. They walked up the stairs in silence.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Andrew asked once they were inside.

Neil shook his head. “Yes or no?” he said instead.

“Yes, but nothing below the waist.”

Neil stepped closer and wrapped his arms around Andrew’s middle. Andrew’s chest was firm and warm. Neil leaned against it. To his surprise, he felt Andrew’s arms close around him. It didn’t feel like a trap. He knew he could step away. Andrew would freeze and instantly let him go. But for now, Neil was happy to be held.

“It’s dumb,” he said.

“That suits you.”

Neil smiled, although Andrew couldn’t see that right now. He took a step back. Despite Andrew’s comment, Neil could see that he was listening. He wasn’t expecting more, but he was waiting for it. Just in case Neil wanted to give it.

“Today’s the day I…” Neil swallowed. “It’s my mom’s anniversary.” He didn’t need to specify any further. Andrew nodded. 

“Okay,” he said. 

“I thought some fresh air would be nice. No cigarettes today, but just…outside. I went to get a coffee. And I guess I just crashed.” Neil’s cheeks went pink. He left out the part about the child. It just seemed too pathetic for him, a grown college student with a salary higher than most people’s life earnings awaiting him, to be jealous of a child with chocolate milk on its face. He didn’t even know anything about it. Maybe it would have an even worse life than him. Who knew?

“Junkie.”

“Yeah?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Andrew’s jaw twitched. Neil took a step back before thinking about it. Andrew breathed out slowly through his nose and walked behind the kitchen counter. It felt safer, even though Neil was ashamed of thinking about Andrew’s presence in those terms. 

“You don’t have to tell me now, but you do have to tell me eventually.” He lifted his eyebrows. “I’ve heard a lot of stupid shit from you. I doubt you can top it.”

Neil sat on the couch. He scoffed. “There was a kid staring at me in the coffee shop. An actual child.”

“Gross.”

“Sure. But I just…” Neil’s fingers traced the edge of the couch. The fabric was old, and was beginning to come apart in some places. He plucked at the strings of fabric spanning across a hole as if they were guitar strings. The room remained silent.

“I just got jealous,” he admitted. Andrew’s face displayed no reaction. No clue to tell Neil how to proceed. He tried anyway. “I looked at it, and I just made up this whole life for it. Not a perfect one, but a good one. I pictured all of it. School, degree, wedding, house, car, kids and retirement. The whole ridiculous thing.” Neil laughed. It sounded painful. “It’s dumb,” he repeated. He smiled and tapped the corner of his own lips. “It even had chocolate milk on its face. You’re right: it was gross.”

Andrew’s eyebrows went up a little. “Let me get this straight: you got jealous of a toddler in a coffee shop and started playing the Sims in your head.”

Neil glanced up at him, annoyance in his eyes. This wasn’t a joke to him. He crossed his arms. Andrew turned around and opened the fridge. He placed a bottle of milk on the counter. There was a container with chocolate milk powder already standing there, next to the fruits basket. Their equivalent of those silly ‘his’ and ‘hers’ mugs. Andrew popped the cap off and dumped several spoons in the milk. The microwave pinged. Neil uncrossed his arms. The cup was warm in his hands. Andrew sat down next to him.

“I know what you mean, okay? I’ve also wanted to murder kids for daring to have a better life than me. Don’t act like this is something outside the scope of my understanding.”

“Sorry,” Neil said. He meant it. Andrew was right. He wasn’t like those people in the coffee shop either. He wouldn’t be here if he was. Neither of them would be. 

“I’m not going to tell you that your life didn’t suck,” Andrew continued. “But you’re…”

Neil looked at him. He took a sip of his chocolate milk and smiled. “Fine?” he proposed.

“…fine,” Andrew relented. “We both are.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“I would. We’re alive. Looks like we’re staying that way for a while. So we’re fine.”

“Looks like it,” Neil admitted. He rubbed the handle of the mug like a rabbit’s foot. The porcelain felt smooth under his thumb. The smell of chocolate was even more reassuring than that of French fries. It belonged to Andrew, who had given it to him. Who would give Neil everything and anything, if he asked. 

“Yes or no?” Andrew asked.

There was no hesitation in Neil’s voice when he responded. Andrew wrapped an arm around Neil’s shoulder, careful not to spill the chocolate milk. He picked up the remote and turned on the TV. An exy channel was on. For once, Andrew let it play.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! I hoped you enjoyed this. I feel like I should be writing now that I'm self isolating, but my writing muscles are stiff, so this was a warm-up. Feedback is welcome, whether it's in the form of keysmashes, actual sentences, or anything in-between. 
> 
> Small note but it bothered me: I hate referring to kids as 'it'. I only did it because I felt doing so suited the characters. I felt like they'd see kids as very vulnerable, and would thus want to distance themselves from that by using 'it'. I also wanted to underscore that Neil is not acknowledging the kid's humanity and individuality. He's just using 'it' as an empty canvas to project onto. So that's why I used 'it' pronouns, but I would never call a kid 'it' in real life.


End file.
